Memo to Mark Zuckerberg:
Not everyone is enamored with the new Facebook Platform. Oh, sure, the grown-ups love it. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine is one of your biggest cheerleaders. “I finally joined Facebook and have become obsessed with Zuckerberg’s creation,” Jarvis wrote in a recent column. (By the way, Jeff, I still haven’t heard back from you on my friend request. Please add me post haste. I’ve got some apps I want to share with you.) Jarvis also points to another glowing review, this one from Seth Goldstein, who puts metaphors into the Cuisinart when he enthuses that “the Facebook ecosystem … seemed to be bubbling up like thick layer of foam over a double shot of Google.”
Both gush about the network with the zeal of new converts.
Then there’s Marc Andreessen‘s recent analysis of the Facebook platform. And a reasonable, thorough analysis it is. Lengthy, but worth the read. Like Jarvis and Goldstein, Andreessen is also a big believer in Facebook. But perhaps because he’s been around for awhile and has seen a lot of Internet innovations come and go, he tempers his enthusiasm with a keen analytical approach. Still, he can’t help but end with a hearty “Congratulations to the Facebook team — big time! — for an amazing leap forward in what the Internet can do for real users and for opening up whole new vistas of opportunities for third-party developers.”
Meanwhile, Facebook’s base — the college students who made the creation such a success — seems to be weakening. Here are a few gleanings from this morning’s Facebook check. These are all comments displayed by UMR students who are in my Facebook network.
______ is disappointed in how sucky facebook is becoming with all the applications. :( *sigh*.
_______ is about to stop using facebook because she is sick of all the new “applications.”
________ joined the group I hate getting invited to Facebook Applications…It’s annoying
________ joined the group We hate all the %&*$ applications!!!
These comments are random and anecdotal. I’m not suggesting that the animus these students feel toward Facebook apps is widespread. But given the viral nature of communications on this social network, this vibe could spread quickly across Facebook and create unsettling tremors.
Take a note from the politicians, Facebook, and don’t abandon your base.
Andy writes! 
I wrote a post on my blog earlier this week about Facebook’s long-term prospects (focusing on a Canadian context, where up here Facebook is absolutely enormous in popularity). In a nutshell, I think Facebook faces three huge challenges in its near future, and those user complaints hit upon two of them – keeping its university audience happy as it becomes a mainstream service, and maintaining its appealing sense of order as the Facebook platform complicates its design and layout. (The third, in case you’re curious, is how it handles the corporate buyout which, odds are, will happen eventually). How Facebook responds to these challenges will make or break its attempts to become THE dominant social networking website on the web.
Nice post Andrew. I think you’re right. If Facebook abandons its base too much, they’ll be just another social network. Facebook used to be a rite of passsage for HS teens coming to college. Now it’s becoming MySpace part II.
Amen… I used to prefer Facebook to MySpace because of the simplicity, the closed networks, and the clean layout. Since it has opened up to anybody who wants to join and recently added the applications, it’s becoming too open and, well, just messy.
What non-Millennial adults (I’m 23 but out of school) need to realize is that these bells and whistles usually do not further the original goal of Facebook (to let users connect with others), but rather hinder Facebook’s actual purpose.
We’re bombarded with advertising every day; a big part of Facebook’s original appeal for me was that the ads were kept to a minimum. Now that every third line in the news feed is a company-sponsored “group” and half of the applications are trying to sell me on something, I’m close to taking my social networking business elsewhere.